Posts Tagged ‘Kickstarter’

Shadowrun has enjoyed a triumphant return and after the superb Dragonfall, I’m as excited about the the upcoming trip to Hong Kong as I am about almost any other game coming up in the second half of the year. Harebrained Schemes love a good return though and now they’re preparing to help another series step back into the limelight.

BattleTech is back. Or at least it will be if an upcoming Kickstarter is successful. Details below.

And so the unassailable Kickstarter hall of fame receives another member. Perhaps this one will actually ever be released? Shenmue 3 [Kickstarter] has finished its monumental run on the crowdfunding service at $6,333,295, making it far and away the most-funded game project and the sixth most on the entire service. The next slot up is the mighty(?) Ouya at over eight million, so not exactly close. Now begins the long, slow process of getting disappointed development with release still planned for December 2017.

Did you play Neverending Nightmares? It’s a horror game in which a dapper chap wanders from one unpleasant situation to the next, in a side-scrolling grayscale world, with occasional splashes of the red stuff. I didn’t play enough to explain its appeal, beyond the striking graphics, but it is “inspired by the developer’s actual battle with mental illness”.

The next game from the same developer, Devastated Dreams, is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter and there’s a demo available. This time around, the inspiration comes from Filipino folklore and the fears of an expectant parent. I played the demo just now and saw terrible things.

Defect is just over half-way through a $40,000 Kickstarter campaign and has more than half of its total still to raise. Now, if you’re unconvinced by the videos and words in the pitch, you can download a demo to see if an actual chunk of the game is enough to sway you into tipping your hat and credit card in the direction of developers Three Phase Interactive.

The premise is simple – construct a spaceship, using beautiful sci-fi-retro-styled weapons and parts, and then hunt that same ship down when the crew eventually rebel and eject you into space.

Chris Crawford is a contradiction: mythologized for his bold vision for the future of games; criticised and dismissed for his lifelong failure to accomplish that bold vision. His numerous critics see him as out of touch and over the hill. A washout. An unrepentant failure. Someone who should give it up and walk away. But he can’t bring himself to do that. He has a dream, and he hasn’t finished laying the groundwork for someone else to carry that dream forward. Crawford is driven by a singular vision — by an idea that he’s pursued doggedly since he left the games industry over 20 years ago. And even now, as I speak to him about Siboot [official site], his latest attempt to spruik his dream of character-driven interactive storytelling, he remains tormented by a dragon he knows he will never slay.

When Microsoft made the announcement that they’d be adopting some kind of Early Access process for the Xbone, I joked that one of the other major publishers would use their conference to announce a Kickstarter. And so..

Last night, while I was catching up on sleep after a frantic weekend, Sony invited Shenmue director Yu Suzuki onstage to announce that they would be funding and publishing Shenmue III on PS4 he would be Kickstarting the sequel and releasing it on PC and PS4. The campaign has already raised almost $1.8m of a $2m target.

I don’t know. Iiiiiiiiiiii ddddddddddon’t kkkkkkkkkknow. A Wasteland sequel seemed like a fantastic idea, given the divisive actiony direction Bethesda took Fallout in. A Planescape: Torment follow-up was absolutely giving literate roleplayers what they wanted (hopefully, anyway – that one’s not out yet). Bard’s Tale, though? I know it’s a landmark cRPG, but it’s not one I’ve heard many people crying out for a new sequel to. I guess I worry a little that it’s old-school roleplaying for old-school roleplaying’s sake, and I’d prefer something stone-cold new. But what do I know, given inXile’s The Bard’s Tale IV Kickstarter campaign (their third to date) has rounded up $800,000 of its desired $1.25m in less than a day? Clearly there’s an appetite, and clearly The Bard’s Tale IV is going to happen.Read the rest of this entry »

I have a soft spot for Carmageddon and I fear that the Kickstarted Reincarnation [official site] is going to steamroll over that soft spot and turn it into a gloopy red mess at the side of the road. After a prolonged stint as an Early Access title, Stainless Games’ rebooted Deathracer launched yesterday. I’ve only played briefly – although I spent a few hours with earlier versions – and while I’m not hindered by the performance issues that continue to affect many, Reincarnation hasn’t reignited my love for the series. Maybe my tastes have changed since my teenage years and maybe Carmageddon hasn’t changed enough.

Despite all that competition, Torment: Tides of Numenera [official site] could be one of the most intriguing RPGs in years. The spiritual sequel to Planescape: Torment promises to outweird the rest of the pack, if nothing else, and the new video below shows the range of environments that will be on show. It’s like watching a showreel of five or six RPGs crammed together – sci-fi and horror cheek-to-cheek with swords and sorcery.

Anyone else picture a KFC Bargain Bucket whenever you hear the words Massive Chalice [official site]? No? Just me? To be fair, I think about KFC all the time so it’s possible there’s no causation there. Regardless, I’ve already planned to sit down with a massive chalice of chicken when I tuck in to the full release of Massive Chalice’s turn-based genetic tactics on June 1st.

I saw a couple of animatedgifs from an early build of Wildfire a few weeks ago, and found them far more exciting than any big budget super-trailer. From the mind of Daniel Hindes, creator of the stealth game collective Sneaky Bastards, the game blends Far Cry 2’s fire propagation system, Thief’s approach to stealth and AI, and the philosophy of immersive sims. It’s a game about outwitting AI and manipulating the environment, mostly through the use of fire and water. Now on Kickstarter, aiming for A$10,000, Wildfire looks like everything I hoped it might be when I first saw those tiny gifs.

By the time I’ve learned that a game is about crafting on a procedural landscape and on Kickstarter, I’m a sludge on the ground, my lack of interest unable to hold my molecules together. Izle had a long way to go to re-corporealise me, then. It did it first by making its procedural worlds floating islands rendered in a pretty, polygonal, flat-textured style. Then by having a grappling hook which lets you swing from clouds. Then by having some sort of ability in which you fly into the sky and then a giant hand comes out, as if from a galactic giant, and I think that’s how the islands are formed? Then you get a bird you can fly upon.